Tonight I made a nice birthday dinner for Mike - we had chicken marsala, sweet potato gratin, asparagus and cupcakes!I was glad he made it home to eat his special meal - I tried to pick a few of his favorites and also try something new. There was a recipe for the sweet potato gratin in one of my cookbooks -- I was missing one ingredient so I added some cheese instead and that turned out to be a bad move. The end product was too greasy and heavy -- all the good of sweet potatoes was eliminated by the way I prepared them and it really wasn't even tasty so I am not making that again...I'll stick to sweet potatoes baked, roasted, grilled or mashed. The chicken marsala came out great so that was a relief and the cupcakes were pretty good too! My Cook's Illustrated cookbooks came through for me in a big way today -- I don't know what I would do without them! Today was a busy day and I have been yawning for an hour already. There were a lot of dishes to clean up after this meal and I couldn't ask the birthday boy to do them so I am taking care of that and then going to bed!![+++inset-image-left